It is now common practice in the electrical industry to produce electrical harnesses and harness subassemblies by means of semi-automatic or fully automatic machines of the type having locating means for locating a connector in an insertion zone, wire feeding means for delivering wires extending from reels or the like to the insertion zone, and insertion punches for pushing the wires into the wire-receiving portions of terminals contained in a connector housing. The resulting harnesses or harness subassemblies will thus consist of one or more multi-contact electrical connectors and wires extending from the terminals in the connectors. One type of harness subassembly commonly produced by known machines comprises a single connector having wires extending from the terminals with the wires being of varying lengths, if desired, and having the insulation stripped from their free ends. Another type of harness which is produced with presently available machines comprises two connectors with wires extending between the terminals in the connectors. It would be desirable also to produce harnesses of the type having two or more electrical connectors and wires extending between the two connectors and beyond one of the connectors with the free ends of the wires stripped of insulation. Most of the presently available harness making machines of the type under consideration here are incapable of producing the third type of harness described above.
The available harness making machine which are presently being used are, in general, proving to be satisfactory, although they do not fill all of the requirements of the industry. Particularly, presently available machines tend to lack versatility in that they are capable of producing only one of the three types of harnesses described above. Those machines which are capable of producing more than one type of harness require a substantial amount of adjustment and tooling changes when it is necessary to change the type of harness being produced. Finally, the presently available machines are relatively large and complex and their use can be justified on economic grounds only where a very high volume of production can be maintained for a protracted time period.
The present invention is directed to the achievement of a simplified and compact harness making apparatus which has moreover a high degree of versatility in that it is capable of producing any of the three types of harnesses described above. The invention is further directed to the achievement of a machine which can be operated in any of its operating modes without the necessity of substantial adjustments or tooling changes in the machine.
A machine in accordance with the invention comprises a first wire insertion zone having a connector locating means therein for locating a first connector in the zone. Wire feeding means are provided for feeding wires in side-by-side parallel relationship to the insertion zone along a first wire feed path. Wire insertion punches are provided which move along a second path towards the connector in the connector locating means thereby to insert the wires into the terminals in the connector in the first insertion zone. After insertion, the connector is moved by a connector moving means along a continuation of the first path so that as the connector moves away from the insertion zone, wire is drawn or pulled from the reels. During such movement of the connector, the individual wires are cut by wire cutting blades which are located along the first wire feed path and between the insertion zone and the reels of wire. The wires are cut individually and a separate set of cutters are provided for each wire so that varying wire lengths can be obtained in the finished harness by actuating the individual cutters at different time intervals after commencement of movement of the connector.
As described above, an apparatus in accordance with the invention thus produces a simple harness subassembly of the type comprising one connector with individual wires of varying lengths extending from the terminals in the connector. When it is desired to produce a harness subassembly of the type comprising two connectors with wires extending between the terminals in the two connectors, a connector is placed in a second wire insertion zone and after movement of the first connector away from the first wire insertion zone, movement of the first connector is stopped and the wires are cut and inserted into the terminals in the second insertion zone. To produce a harness subassembly of the third type described above, comprising two connectors, wires extending between the terminals in the two connectors, and wires extending beyond one of the two connectors, the final wire cutting operation is again carried out while the partially completed harness subassembly of two connectors is being moved away from the wire insertion zones.
The invention embraces both apparatus and method aspects and while a specific embodiment of an apparatus in accordance with the invention is described below, it will be appreciated that the method of the invention may be practiced with apparatus other than the one described below.